Anyone ever use a 300/1200 baud modem using 5 1/4" floppies

[tomd999]

Hiya,

Rummaging through some old boxes in the basement this weekend I found my copy of OS/2 Warp on floppies! All 36 of 'em.... Someone stop me from going to the MIT fleamarket and getting an old 486 or Pentium 66 to run it on, please?:

Tom

 

[Soundguy]

i found my os2 boxed set this weekend as well


thinking back to scavenging parts.. I remember stripping 300ns ram off old boards to populate a memory card in a tandy hx i had.. ugh!

speaking of ram.. remember SIPPS ? darn legs....

 

[dmccarty]

Hiya,

Rummaging through some old boxes in the basement this weekend I found my copy of OS/2 Warp on floppies! All 36 of 'em.... Someone stop me from going to the MIT fleamarket and getting an old 486 or Pentium 66 to run it on, please?:

Tom

I still have two systems that have OS/2 installed. Not sure if the systems will boot anymore but I have the boxes. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Started looking at Windows 8 this week. YUCK! Why do I want a tablet/cell phone interface on a PC? WHY does MS change their user interface every major release? These changes are seldom for the better and Win 8 is horrid.

I wish OS/2 had been able to survive....

Later,
Dan

 

[kiotiken]

My first computer (bought by my dad) is the first in the line of personal computers in the Science & Tech museum here in Ottawa. It was a Hyperion and had no hard drive, RAM packs that plugged into the back and a small (8" maybe) yellow monitor. You had to load DOS from 5 1/4" floppies each time, followed by whatever program you needed to use. It was one of the earliest "lap top" computers somewhere around 1983.

 

[dmccarty]

I worked on this portable computer. It is an IBM 5100 PC. P as in Portable. It weighed around 50 pounds, so P for Portal, is kinda a hoot. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Data and programs were saved to the tape. I have no idea the age of the tape I used but it had to be pretty old and I had no idea on who would have created a new one if my tape went bad. One of the switches would select either the BASIC or APL interpreter. The code I was running was APL which is/was a very cool language. APL has its own character set that not based on the alphabet and requires a special keyboard.

The monitor was obviously small and was B&W but it did what needed to be done. I wish I had this system, the teletype we had in high school and a PET 2001 micro computer with the chicklet keyboard.

Later,
Dan

 

[rekees4300]

WHY does MS change their user interface every major release?

So naive consumers will fork-over big bucks for something they think is new/better when it is actually the SOS with new toilet paper.

 

[MacLawn]

Eeehh, what's that you're sayin there sonny?? Got to speak up!

 

[zene55]

300 baud and you had to place the phone handset into the modem cups for it to work. I remember when 3.5 floppies came out and had to buy a box of 50 to back up my hard drive. No internet we had BBS's. I had one called the Apollo Exchange.

 

[Reg]

I just MIGHT still have an acousti-coupler kicking around somewhere.
The promise of 1200 baud sounded like HEAVEN in the dream days of diagnosing computer failures remotely (mid 70s).
Somebody said 9600 baud one day and we all laughed.

B'leeve it or not, I got my start with LEO.
Look it up some time, Lyons Electronic Office.
A long time ago, I didn't join until Jan '62 when the first transistor machines were just starting into production (I use the term charitably, they were HAND BUILT).

That it is still "news" (well, it is still being written about) in Britain is "interesting".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/27/geeks_guide_leo/
There is a Linkedin (Geezers and Geez'ettes) group about it too, I participate once in a while (-:
We mumble about "back when".

 

[Soundguy]

300 baud and you had to place the phone handset into the modem cups for it to work. I remember when 3.5 floppies came out and had to buy a box of 50 to back up my hard drive. No internet we had BBS's. I had one called the Apollo Exchange.

acoustic coupler..

i remember when 1.44 meg drives came out and many of us converted 720k floppies. home grown way was with a drill or solder iron to pop a new hole.. then one of us got fance with a disck notcher.. like a big hole punch.

I'd say we had a 95% success rate for making 720k to 1.44 early on.. then 100 after that. probably same media after a short startup time.. IMHO..

never tried 360k to 1.2 meg though.

I had a laptop that had a 1.2meg disk.. UGH...